


Five Things Rose Tyler Will Never Tell Her Mum, and One She Must

by Canaan



Series: Major Arcana [5]
Category: Doctor Who
Genre: AU, Introspection, Multi, Smut, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-20
Updated: 2010-12-20
Packaged: 2017-10-13 21:47:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,007
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/142053
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Canaan/pseuds/Canaan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set in the Major Arcana OT3 AU, this follows "The Lovers" and "Ten of Cups."  A little smutty and on the lighter side.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five Things Rose Tyler Will Never Tell Her Mum, and One She Must

**Author's Note:**

> Beta'd, as always, by the marvelous aibhinn.
> 
> Disclaimer: I don't own them and I'm not making any money.

Rose isn't sure how her clothes ended up on the kitchen floor, other than it seemed to make sense at the time. Jack's managed to retain his trousers, which seems subtly unfair. In both directions, since she can feel him so hard against her ribs she knows his jeans can't possibly be comfortable.

Somehow, one step at a time, she's ended up stretched out face-down over his lap. It's appallingly vulnerable and a little embarrassing, but the way his fingers slide over her bare bum and the tops of her thighs distracts her and makes her whole body shiver with pleasure.

His hand comes to rest with that broad palm right against her cheeks, and she's suddenly aware of some of the other things he could do with her in this position. She opens her mouth, can't think what to say, and closes it again. He rubs soft circles with his hand and she finds herself uncertain what comes next, uncertain if a good girl would want to find out, and uncertain if she should ask or just make a graceful escape.

As she's looking around, thinking about that last, she spots the Doctor silently propping up the kitchen doorway. His pupils are dilated and he's certainly enjoying the show. He's unzipped his trousers and stands there, unselfconsciously stroking his cock and watching Rose squirm against Jack's hand.

For some reason, Jackie Tyler's "boys only want one thing" lecture springs to mind. Rose thinks her mum might have missed some of the finer points. She lets her head fall forward and decides she might just die of frustration if she walks away right now. "Well, get on with it, then," she tells Jack, finally.

***

  
They hike five miles out from the TARDIS to see a waterfall larger than Niagara from what the Doctor promises is just the right angle. They eat a pack lunch in a meadow full of wildflowers, and Jack, who hasn't slept well lately, falls asleep to the distant roar of the falls. The Doctor tells Rose there are no sapient beings on this continent, not for five million years, yet.

He and Rose make love in the flowers, under the sun, and it's as slow and sweet and tender as a body could ever want. They lie twined together afterward, and Rose thinks about the things she's seen that no human has before--wonderful things and terrible things and things she can't rightly decide on. No matter how she tries, she can never describe them to her mum in any way that explains why this life is so _important_ to her.

In the end, it wouldn't matter if she did. Rose loves her mum, but while she'd like to be well-off, so much of Jackie Tyler's life is defined by the Powell Estates. Frozen waves and space stations and plasma storms are irrelevant: Girls from the Powell Estates don't end up making love in wildflowers anywhere but in their dreams.

***

  
The human body's flexible, and so is Jack. They've got his hands tied to the headboard, and she can't remember whose idea that was, except it might have been Jack's. She's riding his hips and can't help remembering some off-color comment her mum made, once, about having more fun on top. Rose had been scandalized at the time, of course--that was her _mother_ talking. Now she's full of Jack in the best way, snogging hell out of the Doctor over her shoulder and writhing against him as he strokes her clit and buries himself in their other lover so they're shagging Jack between them even though he's under them.

All of which means Jack is having a _very_ good day, and her mum would slap all of them if she had any idea.

***

  
Rose has never had a problem finding the Doctor on the TARDIS. She always figured the TARDIS knew where the Doctor was, and knew he shouldn't be left alone to brood. Now, Rose can find Jack, wherever he is: the shower, the library, the third level of cellblock six under the Caliph's palace in the Numeran Sultanate . . .

The night she wakes to an empty bed and doesn't find Jack in the console room with the Doctor, she goes looking and ends up in an indoor meadow full of butterflies. Jack's sitting under a tree with his back to her, and he doesn't even look up when she settles behind him and rubs his shoulders. "Couldn't sleep," he tells her.

Or he woke up, dreaming about suffocating. She makes a non-committal noise. "Didn't know this was here," she comments. "Pretty."

"Me either," he admits. "I went exploring." They sit for a while before he asks, "How'd you find me?"

She shrugs, because she doesn't have a good answer. "Just seemed like you were here. Maybe the TARDIS helped."

Jack chuckles and turns his head to kiss her over his shoulder. When his lips leave hers, he says, "Maybe you just know where I am."

She shakes that off, uneasily. "Twenty-first century earth girl," she points out. "Not telepathic, not engineered--nothin' special." She forces a smile. "Bump of direction, maybe. Ah . . . don't mention it to the Doctor? He might worry. It's his ship, after all."

Jack shakes his head at her dissembling. Rose thinks she could probably hide something like this better if she had some real idea what she was hiding. When her mother worried about her becoming something else, someone who doesn't fit back into London and a life of chips and telly, she's sure this isn't what Jackie Tyler imagined--but she has a nagging feeling it counts, anyway. Her smile fades, in spite of her best effort. "Does it bother you?" she asks Jack. "My knowing?"

He grins, suddenly. "Nah. I know this great club in 34th-century Hidrolz we should go to sometime, and it'd save you the trouble of a collar and a leash . . . "

***

  
Running for their lives is an everyday occurrence. Jumping into rivers of unknown depth is something else again. "Long drop," she observes, looking nervously over her shoulder.

"Not so bad," the Doctor says. Which might mean more if he were paying attention to anything other than his sonic screwdriver.

"I'm not sure we've got a choice," Jack says, his hand hovering over the butt of his blaster. "We're going to be in range in maybe a minute."

Rose looks again, and now she sees the torches bobbing up over the rise. "Should be deep enough," the Doctor says, cheerfully, tucking the screwdriver back in his pocket. "Meet you back at the TARDIS?"

"Right," Rose agrees. "First one there makes the tea." She takes a couple of running steps to clear the cliff and jumps off, tucking her legs up. The bluff is tall enough, she actually falls free for a few seconds.

The force of the water slaps her legs, hard, as she hits; and the cold tries to drive the air from her lungs. She manages to hold onto a breath. She stretches pained legs and kicks toward the river's surface. It takes her a moment to re-orient herself when she breaches. She can see two dark heads bobbing above the water some distance from her, and TARDIS will be on the opposite bank.

She starts stroking across, which is harder than it looks, what with the current and the fact she doesn't exactly swim very often. By the time she's on dry land, she's probably a couple miles downstream, she's exhausted, and she can't see either the Doctor or Jack.

She makes it back to the TARDIS to find Jack already there. An hour later, there's still no sign of the Doctor. Two hours later, they find his sonic screwdriver washed up on the riverbank and Rose's heart is in her throat. Jack's scan for the screwdriver was their best bet to find him. It's easy to assume the worst, and hard to keep looking anyway.

Four hours after they jumped, they re-acquire the Doctor in the middle of a small revolution he admits he may have helped start. He's fairly certain he can repair his screwdriver.

"Don't know about you two," she says, her voice thin with relief as they close the TARDIS door behind them, "but I don't think there's enough tea in the universe to settle my nerves right now."

"Mine skipped right past tea," Jack admits, snaking an arm around her waist. "I suggest a shot of tequila and three to five orgasms."

Rose will never tell her mother how little she feared for her own life, and how much worse it was to fear for someone she loves. Then again, Jackie Tyler probably already knows.

***

  
It's a long, leisurely day. They walk through a market and buy jam and milk and spare parts. They eat lunch. Jack flirts with two or three passersby, but no one takes particular offense. They never have to run for their lives--not even once.

Rose ends up curled on a sofa between the blokes that evening, she and Jack watching a movie while the Doctor pretends not to, holding a book in one hand. Watching leads to cuddling, with a small side-argument about whether or not Jack cuddles. He's outvoted.

The Doctor strokes her hair as the movie ends. "Rose," he says, gently, "you have to go back to London eventually."

She makes a face. "Doesn't seem so urgent," she mutters. "It's not _home_ anymore."

"But your mum's there," he points out.

Yeah. She is. Rose feels guilty for avoiding her. Time machine, right? So it shouldn't matter, but Rose knows her hair is growing out, and she's changing in small ways every day. And if even the Doctor--alien, and not domestic--can see what's going on, she's sure her mum will know. "Yeah. I'm just . . . "

"Afraid of your mother," the Doctor says.

Rose laughs a little. "So're you," she points out.

Jack is lying with his head in her lap. He pokes her in the ribs with one finger. "Why is everyone afraid of your mother?"

"Fearsome woman," the Doctor offers. "She slapped me." Jack laughs.

"Can't help thinkin' I can never make her understand," Rose says. Jack makes an encouraging noise, and the Doctor squeezes her, gently. "She didn't understand why I went with the Doctor in the first place . . . she hates that I keep traveling, even with the dangers and his driving--"

"Oi!" the Doctor complains.

"--and this?" She gestures vaguely at the way the three of them are curled up together and sighs. "I'm happy with us. The way we are. And for that, she might slap _me_."

Jack raises his eyebrows. "The things I didn't know about the punishment customs of the twenty-first century. Your being an adult doesn't make a difference?"

Rose makes a rude noise. "She's still my mum."

"Then don't tell her?" Jack suggests.

The Doctor gives him an amused snort, although Rose suspects it's crossed his mind as a "solution," too. After all, he hates domestics to start with, so domestic disputes can only be worse. And boy, will there be dispute over this.

Rose says, "I have to. Not 'cos of her. 'Cos of me. I could put it off. I could take a train over to visit while you two were refueling in Cardiff. But I don't want to spend all my time with her tryin' to remember what I can't say and wonderin' what look's on my face when I talk about you. What I _want_ is for her to be happy I'm happy. I just . . . don't know that she _can_ be. We'll have words about it. I don't know how else. And I'll end up in tears an' my makeup'll run."

Jack runs a fingertip along her face. "Don't wear any. You're beautiful without it."

She smiles at him, but he's missed the point, and her thoughts are already back in a too-familiar track. There are a lot of things she'll never tell her mum, but this one . . . this one, she can't avoid forever.


End file.
